Traditionally, in order to obtain customer service, customers of large organizations have called a customer service help line, which is typically a landline staffed by an automated system, one or more employees, or a combination of the two. These customer service lines typically involve a waiting time during which customers are required to remain on the line to receive assistance. Often, customers are unwilling or unable to find a block of time sufficient to utilize an automated customer service line.
Online chat has also become a popular customer service option. However, online chat typically offers less functionality than the customer service help lines and personnel are often only able to answer questions and cannot accommodate change requests or other types of requests related to customer orders. Furthermore, customers must reserve a block of time and remain engaged for online chat.
Email addresses provided for customer service are typically inadequately monitored and often emails forwarded to customer service addresses remain unanswered for forty eight hours or more. Additionally, emails to customer service often result in return emails asking customers to contact the customer service help lines.
With the popularization of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, mobile applications, or “apps,” have become household terms. Apps are computer applications that execute on mobile devices. Like applications that execute on traditional computing devices, apps allow users to perform a wide range of actions, from simple (e.g., access the Internet, take a photo) to specialized (e.g., file tax forms, play a board game). Many businesses now provide mobile apps to their customers. While these apps may be utilized for customer service, application development and delivery professionals face a distinct challenge serving the increasingly mobile customer. Persuading customers to download, install, and regularly use mobile applications is a challenge.
With the continued rise of smartphone technology, SMS texting has emerged as a communication medium of choice for modern consumers. Texting encourages concise communication with its small message-size limit. Because texting is asynchronous, the process of exchanging texts does not involve wasted time. Customers are able to focus on other tasks while awaiting a response. Out of customer frustration with other available inadequate modes of customer service access, customers frequently send an SMS text to a customer service number. Because the customer service numbers are generally tied to landlines, business personnel do not receive these texts.
Customers need a fast, efficient way to get help from companies with whom they do business. The pervasiveness and familiarity of text messaging makes it an ideal channel to win, serve, and retain customers who require assistance from a contact center agent. With respect to certain businesses, such as banking, customers have easy access to customer service telephone numbers. For example, banking customers frequently carry debit and credit cards with toll free contact numbers on them. However, these toll free numbers are for landline phones that do not support texting.
Accordingly, a solution is needed that will allow mobile users to employ SMS texting as an efficient customer service channel using existing toll free numbers. Further, a solution is needed that will transport SMS texts sent to toll free numbers to a customer support platform. Additionally, a solution is needed that will chain and route multiple text interactions from the same customer to achieve continuity in customer service. Furthermore, a secure solution is needed that will ensure that the customer is properly authenticated for text messaging and that the text message servicing is secure or escalate to a more secure channel when the security of text servicing is insufficient for the needs of the customer with respect to the particular customer service request.